


The Verge of Jordan

by PasdeChameau



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: But like in a happy way?, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Do people trigger warn for that?, I do because I have debilitating health anxiety, In an otherwise pretty generic afterlife, M/M, Major Illness, Post-Canon, Vague references to Christianity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PasdeChameau/pseuds/PasdeChameau
Summary: "Do you want to know what Heaven looks like? Here it it is. This is exactly what it looks like: It looks like one long kiss."





	The Verge of Jordan

The pain rolls through him in waves, hammering at his guts, wringing him dry, then slackening. In every trough, the world forms around him once more: sights, sounds, and smells that press in upon him, demanding his attention. The fluttering light of the _kudlik_ , the loamy scent of crushed vegetable matter, a woman’s voice, too low to understand.

Now touch—a hand passing gently over his brow. “Can you hear me? She says there is something in you—in your belly—that should not be there. She says she can try to rid you of it, but that you are very ill.” A different voice—female too, but brighter. Younger.

“No,” he frets, and feels his head roll side to side. “No, I don’t want—no. No help. Nothing. Let me be.”

Murmurs, a conversation, and then the nausea rears up once again, blacking out all noise. At last he comes to, the woman’s fingers carding lightly through his sparse hair. “Hush,” she says, “Of course we will do nothing you don’t want, but let us give you something for the pain at least?”

Ashamed, he lies motionless as the tears seep from beneath his clenched lids. “God, yes, please. Anything for that.” He has forgotten, spoken in English, but they understand him nonetheless.

 

  
It’s easier after that, but Francis doesn’t delude himself. He is dying. A tumor, he supposes, based on what Atuat has said; he’s alert enough now to know that it is she who tends him, wetting his fever-cracked lips with fireweed and Labrador tea—medicines to still the roiling of his stomach and carry him high above the hurt. Others keep him company at times, but it is Atuat who sits beside him in the evenings, folding his fingers between her creased palms like leaves within a book, guiding him into sleep.

He wishes the slide into death could be so easy. Francis was never one for religion, though, and not so cowardly as to take to it now. And then, it’s not the angels, nor the saints, nor the Trinity itself he regrets, but only the hand that might reach for him in his suffering, and pull him past it and beyond.

One hand. James’s.

A simple, spare wish, and one Francis still expects to be denied. Grace, like all things, has its borders, and they lie at the perimeter of a shabby canvas tent, long swallowed up by the horizon.

 

He wakes one night to agony—not even Atuat’s drafts can touch it now—but also to something else, brushing light against his cheek. Smoother and warmer than fingertips. Lips.

Francis draws in a startled breath, and that is when he hears it. “Careful, old man—or do you want to rouse the entire village? They need their rest, tending to a layabout like you.” It’s James—impossibly, but there’s a smile curled in his voice that Francis cannot fail to recognize.

“You—? How—?”

Softly, a finger bars his mouth. “Hush,” James murmurs, “Don’t speak. I know it must hurt to do so.”

But Francis will be damned if he takes orders from his second, even now. “You’re not here,” he wheezes. “Not really.”

James laughs. “If you like. Certainly no one else can see me.”

“See—? Blast it, James! Even _I_ can’t—” But James, gallingly, had been right; he has no breath to continue.

James strokes his cheek, his hair, the hollow point behind his jaw. “Well, it is rather dark still.”

It _is_ dark, and the pain only climbing. “The sun’d…better hurry then. I’ll not last.”

“No,” and James’s voice now is low and sweetly sad. “But I daresay you’ll see me yet.”

He has no strength to argue further, but James fills in the silences, his quiet words threading, golden, through the night. For a time, it’s enough to dull the ache in his belly, until finally it isn’t, and he twists and thrashes, desperate for escape.

“Shh,” James soothes. “Let me help you.”

“You—you can’t,” Francis gasps. Grace has its limits, and if they are more elastic than he had supposed, they exist, and will continue to do so when he himself is gone.

“Yes,” James says, “like this,” and Francis feels their lips brush. “Come with me,” he whispers, then seals their mouths together, as every lamp lights up.

 

   
He comes to in a gentler world—vistas of green spreading like wings into the distance, all tipped gold in the morning sun. He comes to with James’s kiss upon him still and presses closer, shivering despite the warmth of their surroundings, parting his lips to feel James nearer yet, clutching at him with hands and teeth.

Minutes, hours, days—at last James draws away, just far enough for Francis to see him properly, gleaming young and hale in the velvet glow of dawn.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Death upon a kiss?”

James smiles, tolerant and amused. “Does this look like death to you?”

Francis would hardly know—has only the vaguest sense of where and what they are, so lost is he in James. James, who looks and sounds and feels like—like what Francis hardly dares to put a name to for fear of crushing it between his fingers. Instead, he pulls James to him once again and sighs as their lips align. Canaan. Arcadia. Grace beyond measure.

**Author's Note:**

> So the loose inspiration for this fic was in fact the Paul Schrader quote from the summary, which in turn refers to a scene from his 2018 film First Reformed. Which, imo, was incredible, but I digress: I was blown away by what a beautiful image of heaven that was, and this is me riffing on it.
> 
> "Death upon a kiss" is a slightly tweaked reference to Othello. Francis doesn't necessarily strike me as the type to drop a lot of literary allusions, but it's my favorite Shakespeare play, and I needed a phrase comparable to "kiss of death" (which postdates the 19th century), so we’re all just going to have to deal with it.
> 
> Fireweed and Labrador tea are traditional Inuit medicines that can be used as antispasmodics/treatments for stomach problems—i.e. my best guess at palliative treatment for some kind of handwavy GI cancer.


End file.
